Teaching
I look upon the instruction and mentoring of the next generation as a central responsibility of the artist and scholar. In the classroom, as on the stage and in my research, I aim to engage my students with the drama, poetry, and politics of the theatre.
As a teacher and mentor, I encourage my students to engage critically with text and audience. I push them to work with discipline and dedication to develop high-level artistic and intellectual skills and a broad knowledge of the combined arts of the theatre, and I embolden them to initiate collaborative companies.
I have been teaching academic and practical courses in Higher Education in the discipline of theatre and drama on the undergraduate and postgraduate level for over a decade at Harvard Cornell, and Vanderbilt. I have taught lecture and seminar courses on contemporary world theatre, theatre of protest and revolution, Middle Eastern theatre, and drama in translation. I have taught studio courses in voice & speech, and various approaches to acting including Stanislavski, Knebel’s Active Analysis, Practical Aesthetics, and Shakespeare. I have also directed and facilitated numerous student productions, including several English-language world premieres of new Arabic drama.
As a theatre artist and scholar who loves to teach, I have given considerable thought to how theatre techniques can improve pedagogy across various disciplines. I was Founding Director of the Program in Speaking and Learning at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching at Harvard University, where I worked with professors from over thirty departments. I have devised approaches to integrating performance techniques into the classroom and given numerous workshops and courses on the dynamics of classroom discussion, the lecture as performance, and the role of the physical voice in student learning.